Apologies
by Shatteredsand
Summary: It's a pretty simple thing, for Isaac. Forgiving her. Allison, on the other hand, needs a little more convincing.


**AN: Because Allisaac. And _feelings_.**

**Summary: It's a pretty simple thing, for Isaac. Forgiving her. Allison, on the other hand, needs a little more convincing.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own "Teen Wolf".**

**Apologies**

She asks him about it. After the Alpha Pack has gone, after Jennifer's dead and buried in a grave he dug himself, after Scott had looked at the ground for a silent, solid two minutes before telling Isaac he just wanted Allison to be happy with or without him, after the chaos that is the first three months of their junior year, she asks him about it.

"Why did you forgive me? You know, for stabbing you?" Her eyes are on the floor when she asks, and Isaac hates it when she won't look at him. Nobody looked at him for a long time because nobody wanted to see because then they'd be responsible for what they could be stopping but weren't. He wants her to look at him, to see who he is and how he's doing. See that he's okay, right now, with her. That she helps make him okay.

"You apologized." It doesn't sound like much of an answer, Isaac realizes after a beat. Allison must thinks so, too, because she doesn't say anything, doesn't raise her head. Doesn't look at him. He's not sure how he can explain it to her. It sounds flippant, _you apologized_. But it isn't; it really, really isn't. "My dad..." He trails off, can't find the words. Isn't comfortable with talking about his past, even though she probably already knows everything. Derek had told Scott, Scott had probably told her and Stiles, she and Stiles had both probably told Lydia once Lydia was in the know. It isn't really a secret anymore.

But he doesn't know how to talk about it, doesn't want to talk about it.

Only she's stiffened up, edged just the slightest bit away from him, and he realizes that he's an idiot. Because, of course, she thinks he's comparing her to his father. Her solidary, grief-fueled attack with his dad's constant, systematic abuse. That he doesn't care that she'd stabbed with Chinese ring daggers, because he's had worse and at least he heals now.

Which isn't what he'd been trying to say at all.

"My dad..." Isaac tries again. This feels important. Like something he doesn't want to screw up. "He hurt me. A lot. Because I wasn't the son he'd wanted, and the one he _had _wanted went and got himself shot serving his country. Because he wanted to, and he could. Because making me small made him feel big. Because making me love him anyways made him feel like a god..."

Allison is looking at him now, but suddenly Isaac wishes she wasn't. He feels naked and vulernable. All his weakness laid out in front of her, and he realizes she could hurt him like this. In a different way than before. Hurt him with her words and her actions and the tiny expressions of her face she's trying not to show.

"He never said 'sorry'. In books and stuff, they always give abusive parents and partners that moment, after. Where they apologize. Where they convince the other person that they were acting rationally and they're _sorry _but you clearly made them do it...My dad never once said he was sorry.

"Everything was my fault, but he wasn't _sorry _I'd made him hit me. He wasn't sorry that he'd been _forced _to lock me up in a freezer. He wasn't sorry about the broken bones or the cuts that needed stitches or the meals he wouldn't let me eat. It was my fault, and he wasn't sorry about it at all because I _deserved _it." Isaac realizes, abstractly, that's he's getting too worked up. The wolf is pacing at the back of his mind and howling blinding at the moon that hasn't risen yet and wouldn't be full even if it had.

"Isaac," Allison is trying to talk to him, but he still thinks she's drawing the wrong moral from his story, trying to learn the wrong lesson. He wants to get this right, but he's never known how to do anything but get everything wrong.

"You said 'sorry'. You meant it. And the next time you got angry, at me, at Derek, at anything at all, you didn't do it again. I was _bad_, and I attacked you, and you didn't hurt me for it. You could have. Nobody would have blamed you, because there I was being all crazy werewolf and you were defending yourself. But you didn't. You _didn't hurt me again_." His voice breaks, and he hates the weakness in him, the weakness he'd thought he'd removed with the bite. He should be better than this, but he isn't and he never was. And he feels pathetic, for being so grateful, for wanting her so much that it wouldn't even matter if she'd done it again. If she had riddled his body with arrows and cut his skin to ribbons, he thinks he would forgive her if she just said the words, even if she didn't _mean_ them.

He is distraught to realize, as the tears crash onto trembling hands, that he's crying. That he's been crying for a while and his throat hurts from talking through the sobs held tight in his chest. He doesn't want to cry. Men don't cry, and he's supposed to be a man, and isn't that why his father had always been so angry with him all the time? Because he was weak and stupid and not man enough for the Lahey name? He wants to be man enough for Allison, wants her to think he's good enough, and he's fucking it all to hell because he _isn't _good enough. He doesn't know how to be.

Except, Allison doesn't yell at him, doesn't throw things, doesn't snarl with disgust, doesn't hit or kick or stab or shoot him. She holds him.

Isaac cannot remember being held before. It must have happened. Back when his mother was alive, went Camden was younger and not quite like their father, when his dad wasn't angry all the time about everything. Somebody must have held him back then.

Isaac cannot remember.

Allison whispers words into his hair, words he can't hear or understand, but are soothing just the same. And she holds him. And Isaac lets himself cry because maybe this time it's okay to cry and to not be strong. Because his father is dead, and he can't judge him for this. And Allison is alive, and she isn't going to.

Allison asks him about it. After he's sobbed into her shoulder for the better part of twenty minutes, after he's stopped shaking like the last leaf to fall, after he's wiped his eyes and his nose, after he's stared at his hands with so much shame that he burns with it, she asks him about it.

"Why did you keep apologizing to me? You haven't done anything wrong."

This time, it isn't so simple. And Isaac doesn't have an answer.

**AN: So there it is. I'm toying with the idea of making this into a series of one-shots, a "conversations everyone should be having with each other but apparently aren't" kind of deal, so let me know what you think.**


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